Logging

Datadog's log indexing charges create a perverse incentive: teams must choose between comprehensive logging (high cost) and reduced cost (limited visibility). Indexing only 20% of logs to cut costs means 80% of data is invisible during incidents precisely when full visibility is needed most. This forces budget-constrained teams to strategically under-log, increasing incident resolution times.

Teams either flood systems with useless log data or provide no actionable context during incidents, making poor logging itself a root cause of outages rather than a tool for resolution. Good logging about decisions and traceability is often neglected.